More than doctors and drugs

A new report ranking the well-being of women in America’s top 25 metropolitan areas delivered bad news for Houston.

We finished third from the bottom, above only San Antonio and the Riverside-San Bernadino, Calif., metro areas.

But there were some intriguing lessons, too, if we can unravel what they mean.

The study, conducted by Measure of America, an initiative of the Social Science Research Council, evaluated government data on health, education and income.

Houston nudged up to No. 20 on female life expectancy, at 80.9 years. That compares to 81.3 years, on average, for all U.S. females, and 84.5 years in San Francisco, which topped the list for life expectancy and finished in the top three on the other measures.

Detroit finished at the bottom on life expectancy, at 80.3 years.

That might not seem like a big difference, but Sarah Burd-Sharps, co-director of Measure of America, says four years is pretty significant.

And the differences within ethnic and racial groups are even more stark.

Asian-American women in the Houston metro area have a life expectancy of 88.5 years, compared to 86.7 years for Latinas here, 80.3 years for Anglo women and 76.7 years for African-American women.

Latinas are less likely to smoke, as well as less likely to be heavy drinkers. And although they are less likely to have health insurance and more likely to hold jobs requiring them to be on their feet for long periods of time, Latinas also are less likely to have low-birthweight babies, perhaps the result of strong social and community support.

All of those findings need more research, Burd-Sharps said.

But we already know longevity is a key measure of overall health. “It tells us about survival. That seems very basic,” she said. “You wouldn’t think there would be that much variation, and yet within the United States, it’s astounding how much variation there is.”

Asian-American women in New Jersey outlive American Indian women in North Dakota by 25 years. Suburban women outside Washington D.C. outlive women in a neighboring congressional district by 10 years.

“We focus on doctors and drugs, but it’s primarily the conditions of communities,” Burd-Sharps said. “Whether they have access to healthy food, to places where kids can play safely outside. sidewalks, as opposed to only driving. Whether kids are breathing healthy air. Higher education is seen as a major driver of longer lives.”

So in the Houston area, where some women, especially Latinas and Asian-Americans, have relatively long life expectancies but educational levels are low, it’s a mixed bag.

“The big message is that tackling today’s causes of premature death really requires improving the conditions in which people are growing up and growing old,” Burd-Sharps said. “This is really about understanding what’s working, which groups are thriving, so we can take action to make sure the groups that are falling behind do better as well.”

Another meaningless study intended solely to get more research grant dollars for a totally useless study that will be debunked in a few weeks. Just who are the Social Science Research Council and Measure of America?